Sunday, February 17, 2008

Doctors Group Calls for End of Pot Ban

Sacramento, Calif. -- A large and respected association of physiciansis calling on the federal government to ease its strict ban onmarijuana as medicine and hasten research into the drug's therapeutic uses.

The American College of Physicians, a 124,000-member group that isthe nation's largest for doctors of internal medicine, contends thatthe long and rancorous debate over marijuana legalization hasobscured good science that has demonstrated the benefits andmedicinal promise of cannabis.

In a 13-page position paper approved by the college's governing boardof regents and posted Thursday on the group's Web site, the ACP callson the government to drop marijuana from Schedule I, a classificationit shares with illegal drugs such as heroin and LSD that areconsidered to have no medicinal value and a high likelihood of abuse.

The declaration could put new pressure on lawmakers and governmentregulators, who for decades have rejected attempts to reclassifymarijuana. Bush administration officials have aggressively rebuffedall attempts in Congress, the courts and among law enforcementorganizations to legitimize medical marijuana.

Clinical researchers say the federal government has resisted fullstudy of the potential medical benefits of cannabis, instead pouringmoney into looking at its negative effects. A dozen states havelegalized medical marijuana, but the federal prohibition has led toan enforcement tug-of-war.

The ACP position paper calls for protection of both doctors andpatients from criminal and civil penalties in states that haveadopted medical-marijuana laws.

Medical-marijuana advocates embraced the position paper as awatershed event that could help turn the battle in their favor.

Bruce Mirken, a San Francisco spokesman for the Marijuana PolicyProject, said the ACP position is "an earthquake that's going torattle the whole medical marijuana debate."

The ACP, he said, "pulverized the government's two favorite mythsabout medical marijuana -- that it's not supported by the medicalcommunity and that science hasn't shown marijuana to have medical value."

But officials at the White House Office of National Drug ControlPolicy said calls for legalizing medical marijuana are misguided.

"What this would do is drag us back to 14th-century medicine," saidBertha Madras, the drug czar's deputy director for demand reduction."It's so arcane."

She said guidance on marijuana as medicine ought to come from theU.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is unlikely ever to approveleafy cannabis as a prescription drug. Two oral derivatives ofmarijuana's psychoactive ingredient, THC, have won FDA approval, andthe agency is also in the early stages of considering a marijuana spray.

An FDA spokeswoman referred reporters to a 2006 news advisory notingthat the agency has never approved of smoked marijuana as a medical treatment.